In the Afternoon Sun
by ghostlycustard
Summary: Shikamaru observes his lover, Neji, in the aftermath of a brutal attack exacted by the Hyuuga clan in response to Neji's perceived insolence.


Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with the anime or the show, Nartuo. I own nothing related to it except, of course, for a slight obsession.

Note: Please enjoy!

In the Afternoon Sun

In the afternoon sun, your skin seems translucent, and the light catches the thin sheen of sweat on your arm as you raise it up with careful, practiced efficiency to complete your stance. My eyes follow the purposeful trails of sharply blue veins running from the middle of your outstretched arm to your tapered wrist, where they converge and fray up into your palm. I take a breath.

"Byakuugan."

For an instant, I am following new veins as they fan out from your opaque eyes, but too soon I feel the hiccup in your chakra flow, and you collapse. Dirt billows up around you. Pockets of it linger in the humid air even as it settles. I make my way over to you, and find you smudged liberally with it, your breathing labored, your eyes shut painfully. Listening to you unsteadily inhale thick air disrupts the rhythm of my own respiration as I crouch down and run two fingers over your creased brow. We remind ourselves how to breathe again together.

"Neji," I say.

The sun's intense heat makes the skin on the back of my neck tingle. You place your hand gently over mine, stilling my fingers just as they slide over the easy arch of your right eye. You guide my hand, instead, to where the curse is concealed beneath your hitae-ate, directly below Konoha's swirling leaf symbol.

"Soothe this away," you say, your voice quiet and subtly coarse.

I want to say your name again. I don't. I look at our hands, tan and pale and mutually muted in the dusky cast of my shadow. You open your eyes just barely, peering up at me around the columns of our wrists, your stare hazy with exhaustion.

"You would, wouldn't you?" You ask. "Soothe it away."

I hate them. I hate every Hyuuga I have and have not ever seen except for this one, sprawled beneath me, dirt mingling with sweat; except for you.

"Yeah," I reply and pull away, sitting back on my haunches and assessing you with the critical eye for details that Naras are known for.

You're scuffed, I determine, and tired, and your chakra reserves are low, but you are otherwise unharmed. I sigh and hold out my hands to you. You regard me dully, wearily, for a moment, and then you sit up, leaving grayish trails of dirt lingering in the air, and accept my help.

"C'mon," I say. "Let's rest."

You cross your arms at your waist and walk beside me quietly. Neither of us acknowledges how slowly we have to move for you to be able to manage the distance without auxiliary help from me.

Under the cool shade of the tree, you recline against the rutted trunk, closing your eyes again, letting your head rest against the uneven, moist bark, your lips barely parted. I am next to you, capturing with my peripheral vision the way the filtered sunlight dapples you, and playing myself at a game of shogi I have scratched into the ground. Lately, I have been playing shogi like I am a starving man and it is my only source of nourishment. You have commented on it, called me obsessed, mentioned once as we were both on the verge of sleep that I seemed distant. When this happens, I shrug at you and light a cigarette or roll over to face the wall, unwilling to tell you yet, perhaps ever, of the ease with which I am now able to imagine the systematic destruction of your family; unwilling to tell you that if you had died under their torturous ministrations, I would have exacted every violent calculation brewing in my mind. I scratch the dirt and check myself.

"Are you hungry?" I ask, hoping you'll say yes, so I can have hard data suggesting you're getting your appetite back.

"No," you say, contrary, as usual. "Thirsty, though."

I hand you the canteen, and the dirt from your hand mixes with the condensation on the side, leaving muddy smudges once you have had your fill and handed it back to me. The smudges have transferred to my own hands.

"Troublesome," I mutter, wiping it on my pants.

Your lips curve into a tiny smirk at my expense before you sigh deeply and close your eyes again, looking wan and exhausted. I'll take this, though, because wan and exhausted is a far cry better than hovering on the brink of death, which is what you were doing almost a month ago. At the weekly checkups you absolutely hate attending, Tsuande says again and again that it's amazing you're healing so quickly. It's not so amazing to me. Expecting anything less from you is doing you a disservice, but, like most people, Tsuande doesn't truly know you. Still, if my family had gathered together and sealed my chakra with the singular purpose of torturing me until I renounced my lifestyle and my decision not to have children or suffer permanent brain damage, maybe death, I think I might have gone insane. You didn't. Instead, when you came out of your two week coma, you stayed silent for two days, and in the gray quiet of twilight on the third, you grabbed my hand and said,

"They left me to die. Shika, they would rather I have _died_."

I swallowed hard and climbed into the narrow hospital bed, pulling the overly starched sheet over us both. We faced each other, resting our heads together gently, one of your arms draped over my waist, one of my hands sliding up and down your diminished bicep—familiar. The heavy drapery of night closed in around us, and if you cried at all, it was too dark for me to tell. That was the last time you spoke of your family.

I become aware that you are staring at me—I am curiously sensitive to the sensation of your eyes on me—and I shift so I can look at you without craning my neck over my shoulder.

"Yes?" I ask, feeling my eyebrow arch almost mechanically.

The purple shadows pressed beneath your eyes are exaggerated in the shade as you tilt your face toward the ground, never taking your eyes off of me. A beat, a pause in the essential rhythm of the entire planet.

"I may never get it back," you say.

"Statistically, the odds are in your fa—"

"I'm going to kiss you."

You do. Suddenly, lightly, expertly. Holding my face with your chilly fingertips, navigating the soft inner-flesh of my mouth, seeping inside of me in a way that saturates every cell with a quintessence uniquely yours. And I have lost all sense of anything but the notion that my body may burst in its efforts to contain you.

Maybe I sob.

You lean your forehead against mine, staring into my eyes.

"If . . . I can't get Byakuugan back, if I can only be so strong again, Shikamaru, you will complete what I have lost," you say.

"Neji, how could I possibly—"

"Like you did before . . . before when I woke up, and you became my family."

It's high noon, as bright as it can possibly be, and I know that tears are running down my cheeks, unabashed and unchecked.

"Shit," I say, trembling. "Yeah, okay."

You smile in a way I've come to consider decidedly succinct and wrap your arms around my neck, sliding into my body, and lay your head on my shoulder.

"Okay," is your muffled reply.

You smell of sandalwood and salty skin. Your dark hair brushes my lips. Beneath the searing sun, nestled in the shade in your arms, my mind finally quiets.


End file.
